Transcription
Welcome back everybody. Happy Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. My name is Zach Pascarelloo.
In this video, I'm going to talk about how I use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get bookkeeping clients fast in 2025. I'm going to give you my full strategy. I'm actually going to share my screen and walk through exactly how I do this.
So, if you're watching live and if you have questions, feel free to use the chat. Ask as many questions as you possibly can. Once I go through my notes, once I go through my demonstration, I'll do my best to answer everybody's questions.
If you're watching the replay of this video, consider joining me live. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, I go live on my YouTube channel. And finally, if you're watching the replay or if you're listening to the replay on Spotify or Apple Podcast, and if you want to see the demonstration or if you want to see the video or join the chat, then consider watching on YouTube or you can watch live on YouTube. and you can join in on all the fun what people are talking about in the chat. So either way, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I really appreciate you joining me here.
I've been doing this for two months now pretty consistently. I'll be honest, it's a lot of work, but I'm trying to practice what I teach. I'm trying to implement the exact same strategies that I teach. And if you follow me for two seconds, you'll learn very quickly. I teach consistency, consistency, consistency, and long-term commitment. So, I committed to going live every day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And so, that's what I'm doing. 30 minutes consistently going live every single day.
If you're trying to grow your bookkeeping business, you have to do sales and marketing consistently. And what I'm about to show you on LinkedIn, I do this consistently every day. I'll be honest with you, there are absolutely days that I wake up that I don't feel like doing this, but I've got a list of things that I need to do every day, and this just happens to be one of those things.
So, let me share my screen and let's talk about it. Let's talk about my LinkedIn what what do I call it? My LinkedIn sales navigator tips to get bookkeeping clients. Let's make this a little bit bigger.
Okay, so here's my LinkedIn page. So, there's a few things that I do. Of course, I create content, but this is not necessarily how I create content. This is going to be more specifically my strategy for direct marketing. I do what I refer to as direct marketing. Now, this in my opinion is not sales. I think this is more so direct marketing. Let me show you what I mean. Let me go to my messages here.
So, sales is a whole thing, right? like you you you start a conversation, you go through the whole framework of of identifying what their pain points are and trying to solve their problems and overcoming objections and then closing them. Like the sales process is a long process and that's a whole different thing. What I do is direct marketing. So I very simply send messages specifically to my LinkedIn connections and it's not perfect. It's not great. It's not really designed to be a sales pitch. It's more so designed to be direct marketing. Like, think about if you were to send a flyer or a postcard to somebody's somebody's house. This is what I would want it to say. Hey, and I throw in people's name. Hey, John. I manage a real estate debt investment fund called Zip Capital where you can earn 8% up to 12% fixed annual returns backed by First Lean Real Estate. If you currently have $25,000 or more sitting in a savings account or CD earning minimal interest, Zip Capital could be a strong option for generating consistent passive income. Please let me know if you'd like to learn more. Thanks.
Now, this is for Zip Capital because that's what I'm focused on right now. That's I'm 100% focused on growing Zip Capital. But you could take this exact same strategy and do this with your bookkeeping business. I know that for a fact because I did this five years ago.
Okay. So you first of all you need to do three or four things. So you need to send connection requests every single day. I have found the sweet spot to be 30. I send 30 connection requests every morning. I already did it this morning, but LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it really simple to search for people. So you can see here, this is how I search for people for Zip Capital. I'm searching for people local to my geographical region. So you can actually search by geography based on county. So if I were just getting, so I live in Cumberland County. If I were just getting started, I would probably isolate Cumberland County first. But I have already sent out so many connection requests to so many people that I have expanded my geographical region. So I am just doing Cumberland County and then all of the surrounding counties where I live. So I live in kind of not a big city, not a big metropolitan area. So I have a large geographical footprint. If you live in a more densely populated geographical region like a metropolitan area or a city, you might want to have a smaller geographical footprint. But for me, it's a little bit more spread out, so I have a larger area. Seniority level. This is how I identify people who hopefully are high income earners so that they might invest in Zip Capital. I'm looking for owners, partners, directors, or chief executive officers. But for you and then let's see years of experience more than 10 years of experience and then connection this is important second degree connections this just simply means that we have mutual friends basically like these people are secondderee connections so the first degree connections would be people who I'm actually connected to. Third degree connections would probably be people who I don't have any mutual friends with. Second degree connections we have mutual friends. So very important you want to click that. And then also I have here posted on LinkedIn. So I'm only looking for people who have posted on LinkedIn. I don't want any dead accounts. I don't want any LinkedIn accounts showing up with people who have not posted on LinkedIn. And then finally I have here exclude. You see here there's that X. So here it's it's green. So we are including secondderee connections. We are including people with more than 10 years of experience. But here we are excluding all my saved leads. And that's very important because if I connect with this person then I can check this box here and say save as lead and then I send the invitation and then when I refresh the screen that person will no longer show up because in my saved search I have excluded all my saved leads. So that person no longer shows up, which is really important because I want a fresh list of new people that I can send connection requests to.
So for you starting your bookkeeping business, you would probably look for owner or partner and you would maybe want to exclude director and and seuite executive. And then you would probably go down to company headcount. And we would want to search for self-employed, maybe 1 to 10. So you can include self-employed people and you can include this 1 to 10 employee category. So these are all very small businesses. So if if this were me, if this were you and I was trying to grow my bookkeeping business, here are 25 people in this list right here and I would just simply go down this list, click these three little dots, and connect with all of these people. All of these people are business owners. This is amazing. These are all business owners that are local to my geographical region. So every morning, I'm going to send 30 connection requests.
But before I do that, I'm going to go to my network. This is just my regular LinkedIn page. I'm going to go to my network. And then this is where it gets kind of complicated. And I had to figure this out. I had to figure this out because there's a very specific way that I want to do this. Okay, so connections here. And let me know if you can see my screen. Hopefully you can. Let me know if this is helpful. Hopefully, this is um let's see. Let's go through my connections here.
Okay, so here's what you have to do because I only send messages to people who I've been connected with for 30 days. So, here's what I do. So, today Octo November 18th, I'm going to look at everybody who connected my who accepted my connection request yesterday. Okay. So, I'll just do Ctrl + F and I will look for November 17th. So, there's 12 people that accepted my connection request yesterday, Monday. So, I'm going to open in a new tab. This takes some time. This this is why I don't like doing this. It takes time. It's hard, but this is what you got to do. So, I will open up all of these people in a new tab. And then I will go to their profile and then I will take it a step further. I will say view in sales navigator. And then I'll open up view in sales navigator for every single person who accepted my connection request yesterday. And then once it pops up, hopefully it pops up here in sales navigator. And then there's something I need to do. I need to add them to a list. And this and this will be important when I go to show you the messages, the messaging system. So here I add them to this saved onlinked.com list. So I I check that box. I already did it this morning so I don't need to do it again. So I check that box. So now this person and everybody else who accepted my connection request yesterday gets added to this saved onlim.com list. And then I take it a step further and now I go back to LinkedIn. So now I need to scroll down. And so today is November 18th. So, I'm adding everybody from yesterday onto the list. And then I need to remove everybody from October 18th. I need to remove them from the list. And I'll explain why, but it's it's all because that's who I'm going to send messages to. So, with all of this in mind, you need to do this every day. So, I am keeping up with it. So if you are just now starting then you would need to you would need to figure out a way that you can add every you would need to basically add everybody from the previous 30 days on LinkedIn. So hopefully you're just going to start this brand new and you're just going to have LinkedIn connections just starting today. But either way I think you'll be able to figure it out. This should just be a good introduction for you.
Okay. So now last thing we're going to do. We're going to look up October 18th and these people here, all these October 18th people, we are going to remove them from the list. So, all these October 18th people, we're going to open that up in a new tab. All of them. Everybody who accepted my connection request a month ago, 30 days ago, I'm going to open up all of their profiles and then I'm going to view in sales navigator. So, this is the second to last step. So, we saved everybody from yesterday and now we're going back 30 days ago because I always recommend you only want to send messages to people who have been your friends or connections for 30 days because you want your marketing content to have a chance to actually work. So, here I opened up this person and I have them saved. I'm going to check this box so they get unsaved. Now, they are no longer saved. Now, I'm going to go to messages. I'm just going to simply copy and paste the message that I sent yesterday. It's a copy and paste message. So, I have two saved searches. I have a saved search for friend requests. So, that's we already looked at that. This is the list of like 1,500 people and I'm going to send 30 connection requests every day. We already did that. But now I have send messages. So now because I removed those people from the list, so I have everybody within 30 days saved to that list and then everybody more than 30 days ago gets removed from the list. So I just removed this person from that saved list. And so now you can see here in this workflow this section down here I have excluding people who I have saved on linkedin.com list. Exclude people who are on the list. So I just removed him from the list. So now he shows up as people who I should message. And then I also have here exclude people who I have already messaged. So now I just simply and I have firstderee connections here. So only people I'm connected with, only people who are not on the saved list and only people who I have not messaged. And I also have here only people in the United States. And then so now I go to this message button and I literally just simply copy and paste, change the first name to let's see, hey Dr. Kurt. Send. Easy as that. Send the direct messaging, the direct marketing message to everybody over the past who accepted my connection request 30 days ago.
I've been doing this. So, where am I now? Let's see. If I scroll all the way up here, how many connections do I have? 4,000. So, when I started this, I only had 4,000. I started this back in July, maybe August. So, I have pretty consistently been gaining about 250 LinkedIn connections every month. So, October, September, August, July, I've gained about 800 to a,000 connections over the past four months. Just think if you continue doing this on Facebook and LinkedIn, so you can do this exact same process on Facebook as on LinkedIn. Just think you're going to grow your network so big, so quickly, so fast.
You need to do direct marketing, especially in the beginning, because people don't know who you are. This is how I got my first bookkeeping client. This is literally how I got my first bookkeeping client, just by sending messages to people. That's how I got because in the beginning when you're just getting started, people don't see your marketing content. For me in my business, I've got 5,000 Facebook friends. I've got 5,000 LinkedIn connections. I've got 50,000 YouTube subscribers. People see my content. But when I was just getting started 5 years ago, people did not see my content. So, I had to reach out to people to get clients. That's how you grow in the beginning.
So you want to you want to you want to couple your marketing with your direct marketing. So do your broad post. Create content. Try to reach as many people as you can. Create content every day. You want to provide value. You want to build relationships. You want to establish trust by creating the content. And then you send the direct marketing. And people see your message and they're like, "Oh yeah, I know who you are. I've seen your content. I've seen your videos. I've seen your posts over the past two or three weeks. This makes sense. I know who you are. I don't waste time doing cold outreach because I want my marketing and advertising to work. I want them to get exposure to my content. I want to engage with them. Maybe I comment on their post. Maybe I reply to their comments. I want to engage with them, build relationships with them, build trust with them so that eventually they hire me as their bookkeeper. Or in this case, right now, I'm 100% focused on growing Zip Capital.
So, if you're watching this YouTube video right now and if you want to join Zip Capital if you have $25,000 or more and you're looking to invest, there's actually a link down below, you can register on my website. I'm offering 8% up to 12% fixed returns. I do real estate private money lending. So, I lend to real estate investors and I have first lean mortgages on all of the properties. So, all my loans are secured. I charge them 12% interest. That's how I'm able to pay my investors 8 to 12% fixed returns. If you want to learn more, if you want to invest, register on my website linked down below. I would love to chat.
Okay, now let's get to the the chat. Let's get to the comments. So, if anybody else is watching live on YouTube right now, feel free to ask questions in the chat. Feel free to ask whatever you want. I'm going to try to answer as many questions as I possibly can.
Okay, let's get to the chat. Let's see. Amanda Rose Kelly, good morning. Have you lost any clients to these large remote bookkeeping companies that do really good marketing online and have really cheap rates? No, I have not lost any clients to that. I have the really the only two times I lose clients is whenever what happens either they grow so quickly and so big they have to hire somebody in-house. They need more. They need more support. They need more timely financial updates, whatever. They need an in-house bookkeeper, in-house accountant. So, I will lose. It's great because you want your clients to succeed, but it kind of stinks because if they grow so big, then you they need more. They need more than just an outsourced bookkeeper. They need more than just monthly financial reports. They need like a controller. They need like a CFO, like an in-house bookkeeper. So, that's why I lose clients because they grow so big. They need to hire somebody in-house. The other reason I lose clients is because their tax preparer, their tax accountant, their CPA tries to sell them on bookkeeping. And maybe they're maybe they're paying a,000 bucks a month for $1,000 per year for their tax return. And their CPA says, "Hey, I'll do your bookkeeping for 250 a month, for 300 bucks a month." And to the CPA, they're like, "Yeah, no problem. I'll I'll just add this in just to get some extra revenue." But what the client doesn't realize is that that CPA is probably not going to prioritize bookkeeping. This just happened to me this summer. I had somebody leave me because their CPA offered to do their bookkeeping for like $50 cheaper per month. But what ended up happening, the CPA was not actually doing their bookkeeping monthly. So that's why during the sales call, I stress to my clients, I take care of you. I provide high quality customer service. I am a white glove bookkeeping service. I actually am in your QuickBooks every single week. So, yeah, you might be able to find somebody cheaper, but are they actually going to be in your books every single week? Are they actually going to answer the phone if you if you call them? Are they actually going to respond to your emails? So, I I never try to compete on price. I just simply try to say, "Hey, I offer amazing, high quality customer service, and here's my rates. If you like them, great. If you don't like them, there's other people out there who are willing to pay a premium for high quality bookkeeping."
Benjamin Hicks, hey, love the live streams. Have you ever dealt with late fees and then get reversed? How would you record those? I would probably treat that just like you return anything. If you go to Walmart, spend a hundred bucks on office supplies, and then return them. You will spend $100 and then you will receive $100 back. So, it's just like returning or getting a refund for anything. So, I just put that in the same category. So, you spend $100, office supplies, you receive $100, office supplies, cancels each other out. You spend $39 on a late fee, you receive $39 as a bank deposit or a credit card credit, $39. Same account, bank charges. It cancels each other out.
Jana, happy Tuesday. Shelby, hi, Zach. The client I was supposed to have a call with ghosted and hasn't replied. How do you not get discouraged when this happens, Shelby? This happens all the time. Here's what you do. First, add them to your list. Follow up every month. Call them every single month. Hey, Mr. Client. If they don't answer, leave a voicemail. If they don't answer, maybe send them an email. If they don't answer, maybe send them a text message. Follow up every single month. They could potentially turn into a client. Don't give up completely. However, at the same time, you need to remove them from your your brain, your mind. Stop thinking about them. Don't get emotionally involved with potential clients. That's a dangerous road to go down because there are going to be a ton of people who ghost you. So, you cannot get emotionally attached to potential clients. So, here's what you do. Add them to your tracker and then stop thinking about them. but instead focus all of your energy on everything else. Take that same frustration, that same eagerness, that same excitement and transfer that to your sales and marketing. I'm I I promise you, I am experiencing this exact same thing right now. I have 50 people who have said they want to invest in Zip Capital, and it's driving me crazy. I'm working with a guy right now who wants to invest $750,000. It's it's requiring every ounce of my self-control to not call him every day and show up at his home every single day to just like be like, "Hey, can you just can we just do this?" Like, "Come on. Come on. You already said you want to do it. You already signed the paperwork. What are you waiting for? Invest 750. Let's go. Come on. This is a good deal. You want to do it. Let's get started." You're feeling the same way. People sign the client agreement. People say yes, they want your bookkeeping services and they ghost you. It's so frustrating. You have to forget about them. Instead, forget about them. Instead, focus all that energy on meeting new people, sales and marketing. Forget about them. Focus everything on the new person because there are still hundreds, if not thousands of business owners in your hometown, in your city, in your state right now who need your services. So, focus all that energy on sales and marketing. Update your website. Update your Google My Business profile. Write a blog. Record a vlog. Record a video. I don't know. Do whatever you can. Create more marketing content. Send more Facebook friend requests. Start a Twitter account. Start a Tik Tok account. Do whatever you can to just do more sales and marketing and just stop thinking about the people who ghosted you.
Ryan Stockwell. What makes bookkeeping more challenging in one business than another? That's a pretty broad question, but I would probably say honestly the number one challenge about bookkeeping in general is the client. Getting the client to answer questions. That's the hardest part. That's the most frustrating part. If I if I had all the answers, bookkeeping would be so super simple. Imagine this. Imagine you have a puzzle you have to put together and you have all you have 500 puzzle pieces. If if you if every piece has the image on it, you you can put the puzzle together. It's going to take you some time, but you can put the puzzle together with 100% accuracy every single time. Maybe 99% accuracy every single time. If if all 500 puzzle pieces have the correct image on the piece, absolutely, you can do it. And it's fun. It's fun putting the puzzle together. It's super rewarding. It might take you a long time. You might you might get stuck. You might have to take a break. It might take you a week, but eventually you'll get the puzzle put together. And that's why we do puzzles because we want the end result. That's bookkeeping if you have all the answers. But now, imagine this. Imagine you're trying to put a puzzle together and it's got 500 pieces and 20 of the pieces don't have the picture on them. Incredibly frustrating. You're like, "Ah, I I could finish this puzzle, but 20 of these pieces don't have the picture on them." I'm like, I can't finish this puzzle. I just want to finish the puzzle, but I don't have all the information information that I need. That's the exact same thing that happens with clients when they don't respond to your emails or when they don't answer your questions fully. That's the hardest part. It becomes impossible for us to finish the bookkeeping to do a good job if the client doesn't answer our questions. So, the bookkeeping would be perfect if you had all the information, but the challenging part is dealing with the clients and getting them to answer your questions. So, come up with a way for requesting information quickly and efficiently. That's the key.
Alec, hey, Zach, how do you handle a cleanup when a client only has bank statements and no receipts or pay stubs from their customers? I just go off of the bank detail. If they're using a debit card, then you can see where they went. Like if they went to Home Depot or Staples or Amazon, you can see that they swiped their debit card at the store. That's super simple. If they wrote a check, you have to figure out who did they pay and what did they buy. Some bank statements have check images on them. If you don't have that, you need to get view only access to their bank so you can see the check images. If you can't get that, then you need to you need to ask them questions. You need to send them a list of all the checks and the wires and the bank deposits and you need to say, "Hey, I need more information." So, you don't need receipts or pay stubs. You just need two things. Who did you pay? And what did you buy? If they wrote a bunch of checks, who did you pay? Did you pay XYZ contractor? Did you pay 123 cleaning company or 123 supply company? Who did you pay? And what did you buy? Was this supplies? Was this contractor labor? advertising and marketing, utilities, maybe property, rent. What did you buy?
Alec, what's your process for informing clients about providing your W9 before they pay you? What's your process? So, clients don't need to give provide your W9 before they pay you. So, clients need to get a W9 from their contractors before they pay them. So, I would probably tell everybody, hey, before you pay anybody, you want to make sure you get their W9. And it's not the end of the world. If they don't get it, then you just simply can't file their 1099. So, it's not the end of the world if that happens. But whenever it comes time for 1099s, you want to request the W9 from everybody who needs a 1099. And so, if the client says, "Hey, I don't have their W9." Then that's the time where you say, "Okay, I can't send them their 1099 if we don't have their W9." In the future, I recommend don't pay anybody until you get their W9. 1099 season is a possibility in January. I will probably be talking a lot about 1099s in January, so stay tuned for that if you have questions.
Um, Brad Bernett, what's the next step after you connect with everyone that fits your search criteria within your geographical location? Example, list had 300 people. That's 1.5 weeks of connection. Change location search. So, that list had Yeah. So, here's the cool thing. Your list of second connections is going to grow as you send out more connections. As you get more Facebook connections, that list of second connections will grow naturally because you're going to have more mutual friends with more people. So, the list will grow on itself. But if you run out of people, then yes, simply expand your geographical region. There's so I start small and then just slowly expand. So, I'm in Harrisburg, South Central Pennsylvania. So, I would start with central PA, and then maybe go to, I don't know, State College, which is just above us, and then maybe go to Pittsburgh, and then maybe go to Philadelphia, and then maybe expand to Baltimore. And by that time, I I probably don't even need to leave Pennsylvania. You could probably stay in your state and probably reach tons of people. So, just slowly expand your geographical region.
Marissa, hi, Zach. I've been following for the last seven months. Appreciate you. Thanks so much for your support. Thanks for following. I've been uh I've completed financial and managerial college courses with an A. Purchasing your bookkeeping course for Christmas as an investment towards my business. That's amazing, Marissa. Congratulations. Here's what I will say. Don't wait. Start now. Start creating content now. Get your Facebook up and running. Start talking about it. Start talking about your college classes. Start talking about your business. Start now. Don't wait until you get my course to start talking about your bookkeeping business. You can absolutely start marketing. Get your LLC. Get your business bank account. Get your EIN. Get your QuickBooks account set up. Figure out how you're going to process payment. You can get all that stuff started today, right now. And most of it's free.
Hi, Zach. How much new customers you are getting from LinkedIn? What would be the conversion rate at LinkedIn? Unfortunately, I don't know my stats. I don't know my sales and marketing stats. I'm so sorry. I definitely should keep track of that. But unfortunately, I don't keep track of that, which yeah, is unfortunate. I just I've always been I've always been a big fan of just I just do more, more, more. I do as much as I possibly can and then yeah, I I don't know. I don't keep track of my stats. I should though. Sorry.
Hey, Zach, how did you determine 30 days was the sweet spot for direct marketing? Did you try shorter day periods? No, 30 days is just easy because I just go one month before. So, it was just kind of an easy way to keep track of it. So, on November 18th, I'm just October 18th. It's just it's kind of an easy way to keep track of that. So, no, there's not really a sweet spot. Um, I just kind of makes sense.
Was there ever a part in the beginning of your bookkeeping business where you thought this was not going to succeed? Yes, as a matter of fact, there was. I got a full-time job in the summer of 2022. So, I started my bookkeeping business in the fall of 2020, ran all the way through 2021, ran through the first six months of 2022, and then I panicked. And then I felt like I felt like business wasn't growing fast enough. And so I got a staff accountant job at a global pharmaceutical scientific company called Euroins. Euroins. And I was a staff accountant there. And I did that for six months. And then I quit because my business grew so big that I could not keep up with it. So yes, as a matter of fact, 18 months into my business, I panicked and I got a full-time job. I I regret it. I definitely I definitely should not have done it for the growth of my company, but I was a staff accountant and I actually did learn a lot about accounting and it and it also gave me the confidence like I I was like I know how to be an accountant for a global pharmaceutical company. So I know how to be a bookkeeper for Joe Schmo subcontractor general contracting company. So it gave me confidence. I learned I learned a lot. I learned about I learned a lot about acrruel accounting. I learned a lot about GAP. I learned a lot about prepaid expenses and unearned revenue and Excel spreadsheet reconciliation worksheets. I learned a lot about that stuff. So, it was good experience, but it was not great for my business growth. So, yeah, if you're experiencing that, I would recommend to you don't panic. Just trust the process and keep doing. So, I did that because I had a $7,000 month. So, I was pretty consistently making like 9, 10, 11, 12,000 per month. And then in June of 2022, my revenue dipped down to $7,000 per month. And I panicked and I was like, uhoh. Like, this is not good. I could probably get a full-time job and make more money. So, I did that making $60,000 per year at Euroins as a staff accountant. It was good experience, but would not recommend that I do that again. Don't panic. Just trust the process. your business will continue to succeed, continue to grow. Just pour all that extra time and energy into sales and marketing and improving your customer service and you're going to be just fine.
So, that's it for the video everybody. Thanks so much for watching. If you haven't already, definitely recommend follow me on social media. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, all my social media channels are linked down below. And yeah, if you want to invest in Zip Capital, I would love to chat with you. So, if you have $25,000 and you want to invest, I'm offering 8% up to 12% fixed returns. Thanks so much for watching everybody. That is it. I will see you all tomorrow.